


Vita Dolceamara

by thecountessolivia



Category: Danish Actor RPF, Real Person Fiction
Genre: Drinking, Friendship, Grieving, Hand Jobs, Kissing, M/M, Passing suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:20:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27180313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecountessolivia/pseuds/thecountessolivia
Summary: “In the story, is there a kiss?” Mads asks."I don’t know,” Thomas says. “Is it a love story?""All friendships are love stories."---Mads takes his friend out for a much needed midnight walk.
Relationships: Mads Mikkelsen/Thomas Vinterberg
Comments: 32
Kudos: 54





	Vita Dolceamara

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMERS AND NOTES: 
> 
> \- This is a work of utter fiction. Nothing like this ever happened. I know nothing about the lives of the two men involved. All I know is that Mads says he and Thomas are very close friends and that Thomas had a personal tragedy in 2019. I mean no disrespect. I am simply enamoured with their friendship.
> 
> \- Set during the Italian premiere of "Druk / Another Round" in Rome. 
> 
> \- Part of this story references the Trevi Fountain scene in Fellini's "La Dolce Vita". If you haven't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIz-BgNYN20
> 
> \- Very minor "Druk / Another Round" spoiler

It's after midnight on the banks of the Tiber. A round moon has tumbled out from behind the clouds to cast its light on the water and into the hair of Thomas' friend. 

It is peaceful here by the river. Not a soul in sight. The traffic above has died down, with only the sporadic siren of a COVID-bound ambulance screaming past. Mostly, Thomas hears the slosh of the silvered water and two sets of footsteps grinding the gravel. Mostly.

Mads walks a few steps ahead. A beer bottle swings from his hand and he's humming some Danish tune, something Thomas should recognise but doesn't. He's still in his suit from the premiere but he’s peeled off the tie — borrowed from Thomas — and half-stuffed it in his back pocket. The silk is flapping in the wind like a striped red tongue stuck out at formality. 

Thomas puts his hands up and touches the tips of his thumbs together to frame the picture: the moonlit domes of the Eternal City, the silver silhouette of his softly singing friend. 

The walk had been Mads' idea: _let's go cool our heads_. They needed this. Their days have been blurring into one frazzled loop of planes, interviews, screenings, dinners. The wives gave their blessing, maybe were even secretly relieved to be left alone in a rooftop bar to bond over cocktails and to glitter like two Roman goddesses. 

Mads' feet do a little hop to the tune he’s humming and land him right at the water's edge. 

"You're too close," Thomas says to Mads' back. "You'll fall in."

Mads flaps his arms in a mockery of lost balance. He throws a grin over his shoulder, spiky and bright. "I bet you'd like that."

"If you fell in?"

"You're always making me."

"I always do what now?"

"In your films.”

“ _Our_ films.”

“Jagten, Druk. I always end up in some body of water." Mads’ grin beams again. "Do you like it when I'm wet, Thomas?"

Thomas snorts. “So maybe I'm Fellini and you're my Anita Ekberg. We should have gone to the Trevi Fountain." 

Mads takes a swig from his bottle and spins on his heel. Moonlight glints in his hair and off the grey silk of his suit. "Ah, la dolce vita," he sighs. "But maestro, I don't have Anita's—" he makes a gesture for big tits. 

Thomas laughs again. 

Mads points at him, accusatory. " _And_ you're always making me cry." 

_Because it's beautiful when you do,_ Thomas thinks but it isn't quite what he wants to say, so he doesn't. It wouldn't be the whole truth. 

They keep walking. Mads keeps humming. The cool autumn air smells of algae and decay. The gravel path along the bank bends towards a bridge and they pass into the shadow of its arch. When the darkness around them is almost complete, Thomas stops. 

Here, hidden from moonlight, the Tiber runs black. Thomas stares at the water lapping the bank. Whole millennia of sorrow must have fallen into its stream, he thinks suddenly. Eons and eons of bodies, blood and tears. The more he looks, the more that flood of ancient grief reaches out to him like a multitude of beckoning black hands. 

Last year, after the accident, there were nights like this back home when he stood on the banks of city canals or shores of the Øresund and saw the hands of grief reach for him from the water. They signed to him: where do you belong? Aren’t you coming?

He can’t hear Mads’ song or footsteps anymore. Inch by inch, heels scraping the gravel, he shuffles up to the water’s edge. He tips forward until he feels the stretch in the back of his ankles, until a slight shove is all it would take. 

"You ought to throw me in," he says, unsure if he’s being heard. "As revenge."

And then he leans forward by those last few precipitous degrees. 

For a flashing instant, he thinks he’s done it: he’ll fall. But then something splashes against the ground, something slings over his head, something snags his torso and tugs back hard. Thomas staggers and stares down: he’s been lassoed away from the edge by Mads' — his own — tie. 

Mads spins him around and grips him by the shoulders. It’s not a light grip. "Don’t fall in," he says quietly. "And don't cry. Not tonight."

Thomas tries to look somewhere, anywhere except into his friend's eyes.

"Mads—"

"Come on," Mads mutters and starts gently shoving, cornering, coaxing until he has Thomas plonked down on a bench beneath the bridge.

Thomas stares up: Mads is looming close.

“Are you guarding?” he asks. 

“Depends. Are you going to stay on dry land?"

Thomas looks past him, into the murk ahead. He suddenly remembers he’s drunk. He feels so fucking tired and cold. The sweet slosh of the black water still sounds inviting as hell. "I don't know."

Mads grabs the back of the bench on either side of him. He threads one leg through the gap in the back, then the other, and then plants himself squarely in Thomas' lap. 

“Oof,” Thomas says. 

Mads takes him by the chin and puts the beer bottle to his lips. Thomas tips his head back obediently. He drinks and drinks while gazing at his friend. 

Streetlight and moonlight from beyond the arch have illuminated half of that magical face. Thomas' friend loves to joke and laugh. When he laughs, he has an animal grin and soft crinkly eyes. But when at rest, his face carries the haunted quality of stately mourning. And when the line of Mads' broad and expressive mouth breaks in sorrow on the silver screen, so do countless hearts. Thomas and his scripts know how to make that mouth break. It's threatening to break right now. 

"Your face,” he says quietly, “I wish I had a camera.”

"They don’t pay you to film my face, Thomas,” Mads says. “You need a story.”

“Your face is a story.”

Mads rolls his eyes. “Come on.”

"Okay. Maybe there is a story here." 

"Two drunk guys—" Mads begins. 

"Two _friends_." 

"Two drunk friends go walking along the Tiber—" 

“One sings a little song—”

"One sits in the other's lap to keep the other from jumping in the fucking river." 

“Falling.”

“Sure about that?”

Thomas sighs. "Falling. Jumping. Whatever." He lets it all go. He closes his eyes and drops his head against Mads' chest. He listens to Mads' heart above the rhythmic sound of the water. He smells soap and nicotine and body warmth, a scent cloud of pure comfort. 

Mads takes him by the wrists and pulls his arms about his waist. His hands thread into Thomas' hair and stroke a steady rhythm to the sweet drip of water somewhere beneath the bridge. A sharp gust of autumn wind whips past them in the dark and vanishes. 

"Is there a kiss?" Mads murmurs. 

“Hm?”

“In the story, is there a kiss?”

"I don’t know,” Thomas says into the warm darkness of his friend’s embrace. “Is it a love story?"

"All friendships are love stories."

"I'm so glad you're my friend," Thomas says without looking up. "I don't know what I would have—" He doesn't want to say it. He doesn't need to. He nuzzles closer, starved for all that warmth and closeness. 

Mads shifts against his lap. "You're _really_ glad."

Beneath Mads’ suit jacket, Thomas clutches at the back of his shirt and laughs. “Hard-ons are obligatory when the great Mads Mikkelsen decides to grace your lap.”

"I bet you didn't know I was also your private lap dancer."

“Yeah? Well, you're surprisingly heavy." 

He feels a series of pats against the top of his head. "And you have... big stupid hair, " Mads tells him. 

"I want to kiss you. So much." Thomas whispers, muffled, half-hoping he’s not heard. 

He's heard. Mads' hands slide from his scalp. Careful fingertips pry his face away from his friend's chest and lift it up by degrees.

Their eyes meet. They both exhale into the moment, breath overlapping breath. Somewhere, a bell tolls, a scooter roars past. Distant laughter from across the river reminds Thomas they're not the only ones feeling things in this eternal city. 

“Don’t do it to comfort me," Thomas whispers. "Please." 

Mads' thumbs smooth across his brow. “I’ll do it because you’re an attractive man," he says. That soft, mournful mouth brushes against Thomas' own. "And because it makes for a good story.”

Thomas opens his mouth to say the name of his friend but never makes it. Their lips melt together on the "a". They linger and deepen, easy and slow. There's no friction — only a sense of affirmation and inevitability. Seconds dissolve into sighs and twisting tongues. It feels like a sweet kind of drowning. 

But this moment too will end, Thomas thinks, gone like the moonlit picture in the frame of his fingers. There are no freeze frames in life. Maybe it's that thought that finally breaks them apart. 

Still cradling his face, Mads gives him a small smile. Silver light paints his cheekbones and stubble. His beauty makes Thomas' heart hurt. 

“Do you know what I feel when I see you on the screen in something we made?” he asks. 

“Tell me.”

“Possession. I glance back at the audience and see their faces lit up by your face. You bewitch them. You make them cry. And I think: I got that out of him.”

“Not very collaborative of you, Thomas. You always say we're creative partners.”  
  
“I didn’t say I was proud of the thought.”

Mads’ smile lingers. His hips grind down and circle, not at all subtle. “Are you proud of your hard-on?”

Thomas' head rolls against his shoulder. He groans. “I’m— fuck. Stop talking about that. I'm drunk. You're drunk. Are you gonna let me go? I think my leg's gone dead."

"That’s because all the blood’s gone to your dick."

But Mads does slide off, to the side with a thigh still draped over Thomas’ lap. One hand slots back into Thomas' hair to turn his head for more scattershot kisses. The other drifts down to his belly. Then lower, caressing. 

“You did get a dance out of me," Mads murmurs against Thomas' mouth. "No one else could have done that. I’ll only dance for you.”

“God, you don’t have to—" Thomas sighs and squirms against the sudden onslaught of sensation.

But he doesn't fight it. By the time his belt and fly are open, he's panting into Mads' mouth. A warm rough grip is wrapping itself around his cock. It feels so good, so deliriously good. He knows what this is: he's being allowed no room in his head for anything other than the warmth and touch and presence of his friend. 

"This looks sordid," he manages to choke out. "Two drunk old men under a bridge..."

"Does it feel sordid?"

Thomas shakes his head and arches into the tight strokes that cover his cock. 

"You'd never make it look sordid," Mads whispers into his ear. "You'd make it beautiful." 

Thomas is gasping now, clutching at the bench, then at Mads' thigh. "Do you want— I can touch—"

Mads' hand is fast, relentless. "No. Just let me kiss you again. I’ve wanted to..."

Their mouths lock again, this time with no end in sight. When he feels he's close, Thomas clutches at Mads' hand. He's held so tight when he comes. He feels so loved. Cradled, kissed and murmured to, even as he shakes and half-sobs through the hot blind rush of it.   
  
It takes him seconds to get his eyes to focus. He peers up slowly from Mads' shoulder. "Are you sure you don't want me to—"

Mads steals a kiss, soft and smiling. He shakes his head. "Another time."   
  
Those two words deliver the pathos Thomas had been staving off. Another time: when? What possible alignment in their lives would necessitate a further scene like this?   
  
They're still huddled close, braced now against the creeping night chill. Thomas looks down at their hands, both still cupped over his softening cock.   
  
"Christ, the mess," he mutters. "I don't think I have anything to clean up with."

Crinkles of mirth bloom around Mads' eyes. "Where there's a willy, there's a way." 

"Did you really just say—"

"Come on. Let go of your dick, but don't let go of my hand."

They both groan as they begin to untangle, stiffened by the cold, the awkward pose and the years. When they're both up and steady, Mads draws Thomas' tie from his pocket. Carefully, he wraps it about the wrists of their entwined hands, still wet with come.

Thomas observes the strange ritual in silence. 

"What is this?" he finally asks. 

"Walk with me," Mads says, and takes Thomas to the edge of the water. He gets them both to kneel. "An offering to the Roman gods," he adds and submerges their hands. 

They wash in darkness and silence, fingers tangling beneath the surface. The tie unspools from their wrists and vanishes from view. 

"Something to sweeten the bitter waters," Thomas says when they're done. 

"Hm?"

Thomas shakes his head. He pictures the whole of this moment, with all that it means to him, glowing forever in the river's depths like a luminous jellyfish. "Nothing. I think— I'm just really tired. We should go." 

"Tell me first though," Mads says. "This story. About the two friends. What makes it a Vinterberg?"

Thomas looks down at their hands, freezing cold and still entwined. 

"It's bittersweet," he says at last. 

"How come?"

"Because time didn't stop like it did for Marcello in the Trevi Fountain. The moment is gone. There may never be another. Tomorrow I'll still be the same. Things will still be fucked up. Grief, pandemic— they'll all still be here."

"But so will I," Mads says simply.

Thomas looks up at him, at that magical face. "That easy?"

"That easy. I'll be here. You'll see me in the morning. We'll go for a swim, the hotel's got a pool. And then later we'll order room service and drink and watch some Fellini. After that, you can feel shit all you want. You have my permission." 

They get to their feet. They lock arms and walk out from the shadows into the moonlit city. Thomas wonders if somewhere behind their backs the word "Fin" fades gloriously into view. 


End file.
